Marvelous Makes Expensive Brain Training Game

Hmm...the high price seemingly makes it cost-prohibitive for the very market it's suppose to target (i.e. kids). Though if their parents pay for the cram schools, perhaps this will be a drop in the bucket in the name of "education".

But that's really quite pricey for a DS game...initially I thought it came with some kind of extra hardware...

Yeesh, 7,980 yen is a lot to pay for a DS brain training game. Still, this could be an interesting experiment for MMV and worth the risk if the Hama Academy involvement gets people interested.

I just figured it was a brain training game with only one question:
Should you pay $90 for a DS game?
If you put it in your DS, the only thing it says is "Wrong".

And people thought FFXIII was expensive huh :) 95% of the human brain is not used eh.. I thought we use at least 10%... down w/ cram school!

Doesn't the education system in Asia mostly encourage strict memorization contrary to problem solving (w/ subjects too many to count)? Though I can't say the US public schools here (at least middle/high school) are very good either..

I think most education prior to post secondary favors memorization at least that is how it was for me (in Canada). The only kind of problem solving I remember encountering were in mathematically based classes (chem, calculus, etc.), and biology, but these were specific questions (and few of them) that were posed in different ways and you had to apply the basic stuff you knew. The majority I was tested on was still strictly memorization stuff. Kind of sad, but even in post secondary there is still a certain degree of memorization.

Yeah, I know schools in Asia and Europe (not sure about other countries, I assume pretty much everywhere except the US which encourages a more lax and balanced curriculum from K-12) are way competitive, w/ a ridiculous number of subjects every term. The ranking system is vigorous and brutal, you know if you rank 1st or 40th in your class after every exam, instead of being given a pat on the back as long as you do "well" in the US. It used to drive kids to suicide in Japan or Hong Kong, I don't know about now. I suppose memorization is unavoidable in cramping all the information into students. Of course those who make it thru such rigid system become exceptional, but the same could be said for graduates from good universities in the US. I think both methods have their merits.

I just thought this game being endorsed w/ the stamp of approval from a cram school is a little ironic.. kids go to school from morning to 3pm, then from then to cram school till 10pm. Do they still need to "play" an edutainment game to learn more stuffs during what little down time they have? Alas we live in a competitive world, you snooze you lose. I'm not sure how I would raise my kids later..

Looking at those kids and the model side by side just look funny to me for some reason..

I think the Canadian education system is pretty similar to the one in the states. We don't have a lot of subjects either. Especially in highschool there are only 4 each term, total of 8. Unless you go to a private school which isn't regulated by the government, but that's probably true for all countries.

I never liked the competitiveness of schooling. Being able to work in groups is actually an important skill. And some people just learn differently. I'm really good at memorization, so I was able to study less, but that doesn't mean I'm actually more intelligent then someone who takes longer to memorize things. Different brains work differently. :/

I understand they need the money, but this seems a bit excessive. How many people will be willing to shell out $90 the price for a DS game, when they are used to pay about half? (unless it's a Squenix game, but even those don't reach such prices).

That would be like a company trying to sell a $100 game in the US. Unless it contains some funky controller, there's no way anyone will pay for it.